CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE—LEADS

Heather sat with her back propped up against the wall, a hardbound biochemistry journal in her lap, which James had given her to read to assess any differences in her cognitive processes with the neural network. Without raising her face, she glanced above the edge of the book to where

James hunched over a workstation across the room, picking apart the device that reminded her of a turkey baster—a rod with a bulb at the top. He dropped a couple of screws into a plastic tray, pulled out a wire-laced internal component, squinted at it, then scribbled something in the open notebook on the edge of the fray.

She had hoped he would have returned to the lab a little more lucid, ready to pool their resources to break whatever hold Benson had over him, but that morning, James had come in with a stack of academic journals and the same weary, hollowed countenance as he tried to explain why he wanted her to read through them.

Heather was mostly reading them for something to do now, though she didn’t understand most of it. Robotic or not, she had only a basic frame of reference from recreational reading for Western Blots, receptor families and ion channels, and understood little of the journals’ frenzied insistence on abbreviating everything. It was nice of him to remember she found cell biology interesting, but now the mention of science in general sent a sour buzz through her circuits.

She recalled a sleepy, early morning a lifetime ago, meeting a young engineer whose mutual love of science felt like stars aligning. She had been torn from her life for her parents’ secrets, yet for lack of options, she had made herself believe things would be different. Better.

She turned a page, frowning as she tried to make sense of a graph. All the information from the previous pages was stored in her memory as soon as it met her eyes. A lot of it she had recorded but not retained, kept on file in photographic format. As she read on, trying to recall and apply the information as the journal’s descriptions advanced, more of it assimilated in the imageless integration she was used to, back when her brain was organic. The more she practiced with it, the more the surface photographic memory moved toward something more useful. Some of it knit itself in right away without first sitting in that photographic stage.

It was similar enough, but her drastically enhanced memory retention felt so alien. She could glaze over information, choose not to read certain paragraphs, but her neural network had still pulled and stored some of it, subconsciously.

She used to idolize people whose brains worked like computers. Now it seemed trite and misguided. Intelligence wasn’t worth much without humanity to ground it.

She feared that the mechanical medium of her brain and its internal programs would steadily prune away who she was, little by little, as simulating humanity became a tired script.

Meanwhile, James continued to tinker at his assignments. Hopeless.

When he was absent overnight, she had tried everything she could think of to find weak points in the metal rope keeping her tethered to the workbench. It was tight, tough, and she would have thought her robotic hands would have the strength to rip through it, but she couldn’t even snap it from the leg of the counter.

She’d tested the strength of the counter legs as well—they looked like wood but the centers were metal. She’d taken a second crack at pulling them from the floor, with no success.

James would have to be the one to remove the tether, but there was no way he’d do it at this rate.

She watched him work, studious and oblivious, even while Benson had broken the rest of him, ignoring her gaze on his back. He knew where they were. He had knowledge of variables that she didn’t. Yet he hadn’t offered any other secrets. Instead, he buried himself even harder, scrambling to put himself back in Benson’s good graces, pushing everything else away. She hated his apologetic looks and occasional, clumsy attempts to check in or sympathize.

It wasn’t enough to be sorry.

+

Richard had a pit in his stomach as he arrived at Larkspur the next morning with his laptop and Sesame’s neural network tucked carefully in his bag.

He and Su had spent most of the night with Sesame going through its memories, but Sesame had only personally seen Michael Benson a handful of times at best. James had mostly kept it at Larkspur.

They had gleaned that James had been staying on campus at Empetrum over the last month or so, after Richard had asked him to discontinue the neural transfer project. When James brought Sesame to Empetrum, he had kept it in the apartment, so Sesame had actually seen very little action as far as the goings-on of the facility.

They did have visuals, however. Richard had directed Sesame to take screen shots, of the location, the grounds, the on-campus housing, the main facility from the outside and whatever Sesame had seen within, as well as small glimpses of scenery on the commute, though James had kept Sesame’s box under the dashboard on the passenger side, so the robot’s view out the window had been extremely limited.

Besides guards, the only person Sesame had seen at Empetrum was Michael, and despite Richard’s hopes that James had talked to the robot about his activities at Empetrum, he hadn’t. At this point, they could still only speculate on whether or not the clinical prototype had been constructed, and what James had since done with it.

They followed Sesame’s memories all the way up to when James pulled its neural network and hid it. He had been acting normal driving to Empetrum Friday night, dropped Sesame off in the apartment, and left.

He spent very little time at the apartment the majority of the weekend, leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, leaving Sesame alone in a makeshift pen in the living room. But Sunday, he returned suddenly in the middle of the day, pallid and agitated. Sesame had watched him rush around, packing, muttering to himself too quietly to make out. He had tugged a suitcase out the door, come back, gathered up Sesame and some notebooks, then had driven back to his apartment in Worthing.

There was something on the table with a note. James left Sesame across the room, and Sesame had watched him pick up a small black device in shaking hands. James didn’t touch the note, so from Sesame’s vantage point, it didn’t know what the note said.

It had been hard to watch. James was upset all the rest of the day, overturning his apartment looking for something, leaving Sesame alone, forgotten again on the end table by the door. Sesame stayed still, observing everything, feeling safer not drawing attention to itself, as it had explained to Richard and Su later.

Finally, in the early light of Monday morning, James emerged from his bedroom disheveled and distracted. He lingered in the opening to the hallway, ran a nervous hand through his hair. Something occurred to him, and he looked up, making eye contact with Sesame, his gaze tired, frightened, trapped.

James strode across the room into the kitchen, and Sesame heard him digging in drawers. After a few minutes, James had copped together tools and containers and then he retrieved Sesame’s box and put it on the table.

Sesame tried to escape as the lid came off, sensing something bad was about to happen, but

James caught it easily, pulled up the panel in Sesame’s back to access its neural network. Then the recording that Sesame had played Richard and his colleagues fell into place with so much new, terrible context:
Sorry to do this to you Sesame…
Richard, if you end up having access to this: Whatever happens between now and your finding this message…I’m sorry.

Richard arrived at the top of the stairs and started down the hallway, passing his office to first see if Eve was there yet.

She was.

“Morning, Rich,” Eve said gently, logging into her computer. “Any luck?”

“Nothing new about Benson,” Richard admitted. “But got some visuals on Empetrum, and when

James’ actions started falling apart. Sunday was the turning point, I think.” He set his bag down on the desk, and carefully got out Sesame’s setup so it could participate.
When he opened the laptop, Sesame’s makeshift voice spoke up, “Are you still working on my body?”

“Of course, let’s go down and take a look in a couple minutes…” Eve produced an envelope from her briefcase and handed it to Richard. “I found those photos I mentioned.”

There were only a few. At the top of the thin stack was a photograph of Eve, twenty years younger, and three others: a tall man with sharp features and gray hair, a younger individual on Eve’s right side who had a similar nose and was just as gray, despite appearing to be in her late thirties. The man to the right had his arm around the shoulders of a boy of about ten, with thick rimmed glasses and cow-licked brown hair. The boy’s features were softer and chubbier than the man from Sesame’s memories, but Richard could see the resemblance.

Eve drew nearer to view the pictures with him. “None of the Bensons liked pictures taken of them. I used to tease Lawrence about it…” She indicated each one with her finger. “This one is Lawrence, to my left. That’s his daughter to my right, Alice, who worked briefly at Larkspur as a biochemist. And then this is Michael, Alice’s son. I remember Michael was a good kid. Bright, but painfully shy. As different as night and day next to Lawrence’s confident charisma, but Lawrence adored his grandson.”

Richard stared at the photo for several moments longer, his attention on Lawrence. He had never seen his face before, only heard his name.

Richard moved the top photo to the back and sifted through the others Eve had found of Michael. One was candid, of the boy watching his grandfather work with a microscope, and in the other, he was trying on a lab coat and looking very uncomfortable to have suddenly found himself faced with a camera lens.

“Sesame,” Richard said. “Could you pull up a picture of the man James was talking to, for comparison?”

Sesame complied and Richard held the third photo up beside it.

“Yeah, that’s him all right,” Eve hummed.

“May I see the photos?” Sesame said.

As Richard held up the photographs for the laptop’s webcam, Eve wearily took a seat on the edge of her desk. “I never learned for sure,” she said. “But I think Alice was helping with Lawrence’s awful project. She feigned ignorance when asked about it, but then she disappeared too.”

“Empetrum can’t be that far away, if James was doubling up,” Richard said.

“That’s very true,” Eve mused. She sighed. “To think the Bensons were this close all along.”

“Be careful if we find it,” Sesame said. “There were lots of guards around, and I do not think Michael will welcome us.”

Richard and Eve nodded in dismal agreement.

“Do you think it was Lawrence who set this up, or could it have been Alice?” Richard said. “Or maybe Michael took the initiative all on his own later on?” He considered the photo of all three Bensons. “Sesame, while we work on your body today, can you see if you can find where the Bensons ended up after the fallout with Larkspur?”

“On it,” Sesame said.

“You may not find anything about the scandal,” Eve said. “The government didn’t want to be publicly associated with what happened, so they did everything they could to cover it up. That’s partly how Larkspur was able to downsize, relocate, and continue to operate underground from the east coast.”

Richard looked at her, shocked. “Why did the government bother to cover it up? Couldn’t they have just said, ‘We didn’t authorize this.’ and moved on?”

Eve looked worried. “I guess I didn’t really question it. At the time, I was swamped running damage control, while dealing with the loss of an old and dear friend. Up until that point, I had trusted Lawrence implicitly, and I never expected he harbored the capacity to hurt people like that. After everything was said and done, I was just relieved—selfishly, perhaps—that the government had put out most of the fires, and kept it away from us.”

Richard’s gaze fell. He glanced at Sesame’s activated webcam, wishing he knew what the ex-mouse was thinking. “Is it possible Lawrence disappeared after Larkspur to create Empetrum?”

“It’s something I wouldn’t put past him,” Eve said. “But the Larkspur thing got him blacklisted. Legally, he would have been barred from registering a new biotech company, and no existing one would hire him after the public outrage he caused. Not to mention, his unethical project had every hallmark of being an incredibly elusive undertaking, with little promise of return. Even disreputable sponsors would see it as a colossal waste of time and money.”

The laptop piped up, “Richard, Eve?”

“Yes?”

“I found an obituary.”

Richard stiffened but Eve was the first to speak, “Whose?”

“Lawrence Benson,” Sesame said. An image pulled up onto the screen and the two engineers crowded in to read it. It wasn’t much, just a passing mention in a newspaper for a town in the central region of the country. It didn’t offer any new information, saying he was a biochemist, survived by a daughter and grandson, whose names were not provided.

Richard squinted at it, confused.

“That’s the town he was from,” Eve said. “I imagine he still has family in the area that would have wanted to know.”

“Who would have submitted it to that local paper?” Richard said. “Alice? Michael?”

“Either one, I guess,” Eve said. “Letting relatives know while staying off the grid.” She breathed an incredulous exhale, pressing a hand to her forehead and straightening up to pace. “Three years? He’s been dead for three years? No mention of his spouse either, so she must be gone too…So then is it really Michael pulling the strings?”

“I am looking for Alice,” Sesame said.

Eve halted her pacing and turned to look at the computer.

“We cannot talk to Lawrence,” Sesame explained. “And even though I am curious about Michael, we know all that matters about him for the present situation. The trails for him and Lawrence are sparse, but I am finding information on Alice Benson more easily. She reappeared the same year Lawrence died, and does not seem to be making an effort to cover her tracks now.”

Richard readjusted his glasses and exchanged a glance with his coworker. “Do you think she would help us?”

Eve’s brow furrowed. She ventured closer to the computer. “I guess it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

“She seems to have changed her phone number a lot in the last few years,” Sesame said, and as it did, a number came up on the screen, as well as pictures taken by surveillance cameras. Richard marveled at how quickly Sesame was able to access such information. “I think this may be her current one. It is for this woman. Her most recent address is local, which seems strange. Is this Alice Benson?”

Eve leaned forward again, studying the photos. Richard looked at the physical photograph in his hand, and extended it to place it up against the screen. She was older, heavier, her hair cropped much shorter than the photo, with bags under her eyes and a forehead creased in a way that made Richard think she had spent most of the last twenty years worried.

But it was her.

Eve was silent for a long, intense moment. Finally, she tugged her cellphone from the pocket of her slacks.

“You just earned yourself a damn good body, Sesame,” she muttered, thumbing in and double-checking the numbers before raising the phone to her ear.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR—CANDOR  

James seldom left the lab. He averaged five hours of sleep a night, but otherwise lived there, planted in the same spot at the workstation across the room while the trashcan by the door filled up with empty instant noodle cups, meal replacement bars wrappers, and energy drink cans. A week after Heather’s organic death, she had started counting the energy drinks consumed in a single day, and had had to speak up at least once to keep him from a dangerous caffeine overdose.

He only changed his clothes every other day. They barely spoke to each other. One day, he had tried to install an additional time-keeping device in her neural network to see if she could integrate it, but she refused to open her cranial panels until he had cleaned himself up and eaten something other than vending machine food.

In obtuse, sleep-deprived frustration, he had tried to pry open the panels himself but she stood her ground until he relented. He returned an hour later, clean and cross, with a wrapped boloney sandwich from some kind of cafeteria. She adapted the device with no problems, and he took it back out, refusing to answer questions about why he needed to know if she could access outside software.

For a while, she had hoped maybe he was developing his own escape plan, pretending to work on what Benson wanted but creating something that could help them escape instead.

But he seemed to be sinking all his attention to that turkey baster thing, reading pages and pages of files on his computer, soldering and programming on other scraps of metal she hadn’t bothered to ask about. Probably more stuff he’d soon try to plug into her head.

Heather had liked to think she could never hate someone. But James’ presence was suffocating, his submission disappointing and disgusting. She hated herself, too, for getting mixed up with him, even with Larkspur, in the first place. She watched him work from afar, her hostility building until, finally, she just couldn’t take it anymore.

“You’ve abandoned me, James,” she said, leaned up against the wall between the tall windows, arms crossed, watching scenery that never changed.

She didn’t know whether she meant for him to hear her, but he paused working.

“I’m doing the best I can,” he said, in a tired monotone.

“My whole life I’ve felt like I was in everyone’s way,” Heather said, glaring out the window. “I bent over backwards, trying to be kind, concerned, convenient. Hoping that would make people want me around, but it was never good enough. I never figured out how to be good enough.” She narrowed her eyes. “I was even killed because, yet again, I was in someone else’s way. And now I’m a sentient decoration for your messed up lab.”

James didn’t turn around, though his shoulders were tense.

“I would have started school today,” Heather went on. “Things would have been better if I had just left well enough alone. But I got my dad to take me to Larkspur. I convinced myself you and I were friends.”

“If it matters,” James said, quietly. “I thought we were friends too.”

“But now I think that, deep down, you wanted this to happen—to get back at my dad for turning down your horrible mad science project.”

“That’s absolutely not true.” Finally, James swiveled around in his chair to face her, a cornered look on his face. “I didn’t know it would come to this. I thought I was part-timing at another reputable biotech company, not some kind of mafia. Because, you know, typically, when a guy tries to quit his job, the company lets him. They don’t go ballistic, sabotaging his other workplaces and trying to pin it on him, and executing innocent bystanders.”

Heather blinked. “They framed you at Larkspur?”

James hesitated. If Benson had a gag order on him, he had probably said too much.

“If I don’t do this—” He flung an arm back at the sprawl of incomplete projects at his desk. “He will kick me out and keep you here. And I can’t let that happen. This is the only way I can protect you.”

“This isn’t protecting me,” Heather said. She crossed her arms and looked away. “Maybe I should erase my memory, forget I was ever human. It would be easier.”

“You can’t—”

“Why? Because I have so much left to live for?” Heather snapped. She spread her arms wide.

“More of this? While I was human, maybe I still had a chance, but like this, I’ll always be alone.”

She wished she could cry, that she could feel the cathartic force of a scream leaving her throat and lungs, and get some release from the loathing and sorrow raging inside her. But she only had simulated sound, trapped inside a cold, artificial body, left to drown.

“This happened because you were an easy target,” she said bitterly. “Not because you’re smart. I hope you know that.”

He stared at her, his red-rimmed hazel eyes wide and horrified. His gaze shifted, something in him crumbling as he stood up. Heather watched him, warily, incredulously. This was indeed news to him.

He made for the door to the lab. He was long gone by the time the mechanism caught the door, bringing it to a soft, anticlimactic close.

Heather hugged her knees in the silence. She figured there was logical benefit to dispelling any illusions James-the-Engineering-Prodigy might have had—illusions that the hours of isolation in his lab had also chipped away in her—but realistically, she’d just wanted to hurt him. Get him to do something other than numb out in the corner.

She felt petty and spiteful, admitting that to herself. But continuing to play her old persona of a nice, well-adjusted girl always excited to lend a helping hand felt grotesque.

If she ever made it out of here, she would spend the rest of her life trying to prove to people that she was human, even as her humanness inevitably slipped away.

She still didn’t know if she could, in good conscience, go on being Heather. Technically, she was a clone, designed to replace and continue on. Was that proximity close enough? Or maybe it would never be anything more than just a twisted game of pretend.

+

Erika was doing pushups in her cell. She planted all four hands, trying to put as much weight on the arms off her back as possible. They had only existed for ten days, and she still couldn’t trust much weight to them, but they could build muscle. She intended to build them up until she could walk on them if necessary.

With as large as they were, maybe they could one day be strong enough to throw somebody. While she had nothing else to do, she resolved to do whatever she could to make them useful, to bolster the careful physical therapy Yeun was doing with them, maybe to eventually use against her captors.

Now that the exhaustion from the gene therapy and activation was finally wearing off, Erika was getting her strength back. 

She figured her behavior would be noted, but let them suspect. Let them prepare. 

Erika Hodgson hadn’t given up yet.

+

James sat on the floor in the storage closet across from his lab, his face bowed and his fingers clawed in his disheveled hair. The dimness of the space was quiet and placid—a kinder sort of darkness than the one screaming in his chest. His whole body was ablaze with it, the grief and pain that everything had gone so sideways. That he had walked a razor’s edge of abuse and exploitation and had had no idea until it was too late.

He didn’t understand why Heather was blaming herself just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. If only she had never met him. If only he had never even existed.

His face was hot, and he brushed at the persistent tide of tears leaking from his eyes, but he couldn’t stop crying. How dare he weep over this, some deep part of him that sounded a lot like his father whispered. Was he crying for Heather, or for himself? His own pain, his own regret? He couldn’t tell for sure.

He just couldn’t tell anymore.

His pager beeped in the pocket of his slacks. His arm felt like stone as he twisted to retrieve the device and read the message:

Please come to my office.

His hand tightened on it. He raised his arm to hurl it across the room, smash it to pieces against the wall, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow through.

He thumped the back of his head once against the door. Finally, he typed, I didn’t tell her anything important.

He bent over, leaning his forehead on his drawn-up knees and closed his eyes. He was so tired.

The pager beeped again.

Now.

Slowly, with great effort, James replied. On my way.

He dragged himself to his feet, pulled a paper towel from a nearby dispenser and dried his eyes as best as he could. Finally, he opened the door, letting light spill into his hiding place. The guard waited for him across the hallway, and nodded for him to proceed alone. James complied.

The director’s office was open, and James hung in the doorway.

Benson folded his hands on top of his desk, expectant. “Come in, Siles.”

James wandered forward and dropped into the chair in front of the desk.

“Care to explain your outburst down in your lab just now?”

James leaned forward, resting his face in his hands. He shook his head.

After a calculated silence, Benson said, “She was just trying to get a rise out of you. You need to move past this attachment you have to her.”

James didn’t respond. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“Why are you still keeping her in your lab?” the director asked. “Why insist on torturing yourself like this?”

James thought about trying to spin a logical angle for Benson, but really, he just couldn’t bear the weight of what he had done to Heather. Carrying it alone poisoned him more every day. Maintaining the status quo made him feel like he was on a treadmill, running faster and faster, knowing it would soon spin him apart.

“I don’t know,” James said, finally.

Benson sat still, observing him. It didn’t make sense to him that Benson would inquire after his broken spirit as if it even made a difference to him. As long as James performed well, what did it matter that he hated himself?

Subconsciously, he had been lamenting the seemingly ongoing curse of his intelligence, radicalized by his parents, harnessed by Empetrum, but Heather was right. James was uniquely suited to biomedical engineering, but he wasn’t the only person who could work on Non-Comp. Benson just had easier access to him through Larkspur, through the Bureau. If he had turned Benson down after that first phone call, would any of this have happened? He might have at least had time to get help before the trap slammed closed.

“You’re too sentimental,” Benson said finally. “That will ruin your work if you let it.”

James nodded, his face turned toward the floor. A complete disconnect sounded appealing. He was so incredibly tired of hurting, of feeling guilty for hurting. Of trying to explain himself, knowing it didn’t matter.

“Do you have any more pressing tests to complete with Ms. Knight?” Benson asked. “Besides the device to control her, which I hope you’ll be finishing soon?”

“Just that one,” James murmured. “And yes, I’ll be finishing it soon.” He had opted for a pain simulator, a crueler device than paralysis-on-demand, but while the latter would simply physically disrupt conduction of her robotic spinal cord wherever the device was attached, the pain simulator was complex and software-based, something he hoped she could learn to override.

“Good. Then I’ll have her moved to a housing unit downstairs where she won’t be a distraction. Keep your distance until you need to install that device. You can’t carry on like this with her in your lab. It’s destructive.”

“Housing unit…” A prisoner cell, more like. He dully considered the alternative language like acrid steam swirling above a witch’s cauldron, bending the light, bending reality, urging him to accept that all of this made sense.

+

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE—WITHDRAWAL

Heather dismally watched the goings on of the grounds outside. Guards chatting, birds foraging in the bushes. Far above, a jet traced a small white trail across the sky. She wondered if it was even possible for her to clear her own memory, as she’d threatened. She was afraid to try.

As she sat there alone, she gradually realized her mom and dad still probably wanted her back, robot hybrid clone or not. She supposed that was enough incentive to keep freedom on her mind for now.

If James wasn’t going to help her, she would have to leave him behind. If he was too scared to listen to her, what else was she supposed to do?

That question seemed to be all she had. Confusion that would never have an answer, an existence with no remedy.

She heard footsteps. Heather turned her head to look at the door as a badge beeped in the reader outside and the lock clicked back.

James entered the room, followed by a guard, and any urge to apologize Heather might have felt died when a man she recognized from a jagged shred of memory appeared behind them, standing watchfully in the doorway. Benson’s bespectacled gaze wielded power, like a tangible collar around James’ neck.

Heather shrank back a little against the wall as the director’s gray gaze met hers.

“I’m going to move you downstairs,” James said, hollowly. “I think it will be better if we have our own spaces.” He nodded reluctantly at the guard, who stepped forward to tie Heather’s arms behind her back and lift her down from the table. She didn’t fight him, despite the dread that flooded over her as the restraints clicked down around her hands. James unlocked the ankle tether.

Benson stepped aside, and the guard guided her out the door and into the hallway. James hung back behind them, walking beside the director as the group made its way to the elevator.

Heather tried to glance back. James’ gaze remained on the floor.

Briefly, her attention grazed the wall behind him—a locked metal door at the end of the hallway by his lab. A prohibitive sign warning danger and high voltage.

James said nothing in the elevator, or all the way down the silent hallway on the basement level. Heavy doors with viewing panels lined the corridor, each bearing a cell number. From one further down, a single sheet of paper hung in a transparent sleeve. She zoomed in her vision so she could read it more clearly as they approached.

Subject: Erika Hodgson
Project: Non-Comp MBE
Researcher: E. Yeun

They passed the door and Heather tripped, trying to twist around to keep looking at it.

There were others. She wasn’t the only one trapped here.

They came to a cell two doors down from the occupied one. It, too, possessed a similar notice, except it displayed her and James’ names, with O.R.T. listed as the project.

Heather shot an apprehensive glance at James as another guard joined them to unlock her cell and her escort took her inside. James remained by the door, avoiding her gaze. After releasing her wrists, the guard ordered her to stay where she was, and then left her.

Finally, James spoke. “I’ll bring you something to do a little later,” he said quietly. “But aside from that, you won’t have to see me for a while.” He forced himself to look at her, then. Utter misery burned in his gaze. A continued apology, despite the resignation.

After all his aching and worry about Benson separating them, James was the one separating them. Heather figured he hadn’t made the decision on his own. Fury sparked through her circuits at how completely both of them were under the control of this person she knew nothing about.

She hoped her parents had found something useful in Sesame’s neural network. But her loved ones were just regular people. She didn’t want any of this horror to befall them too.

As she watched the guard close her into the silence of her cell, she knew she was on her own.

+

After leaving Heather in her cell, Benson took James to Yeun’s lab on the first floor.

The door was propped open. “Dr. Yeun?” Benson called.

“Yes?” Yeun’s voice issued from across the lab, through another open door. Then his face appeared, a sterile mask over his mouth and wearing a fully buttoned up lab coat.

“I’m putting Siles in your care for a little while,” Benson said, ushering James into the room. “He’s been reading the background data for Non-Comp, and is ready for hands-on experience.”

Yeun blinked, then looked at James, whose gaze fell to the floor.

“Sure thing,” Yeun said.

“Thank you.” Benson took his leave, abandoning the roboticist with his future supervising researcher. “Be gentle with him. He’s having a rough day.”

Yeun waited several moments for Benson to leave earshot before he said, “Well, I’m just finishing up some mice husbandry work if you want something to keep your hands busy.”

James stepped forward, lethargic. “Mice?”

“Yeah, for Non-Comp,” Yeun said. As James entered the secondary lab, Yeun pointed at a station near the door. “Lab coats, surgical masks, and gloves are over there. Come on over once you’re situated.”

As James donned the sterile gear, he surveyed the room. Cages lined the back wall, and Yeun worked among a system of stations for transplanting mice, cleaning cages, replacing bedding, and reintroducing them. Yeun assigned him to sterilizing cage components at the island in the middle of the room.

After a long period of silence, Yeun said. “Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“I know the director’s been coming on strong lately,” Yeun said. “He just wants to make sure you’re on board.”

James turbidly focused on his work. Yeun returned a group of mice to their clean cage, and James watched for evidence of something weird about the mice, something human weaponry related, but he couldn’t tell.

“So you use human test subjects too?” James asked finally.

“Here and there,” Yeun said. “But you don’t have to worry about that today.”

They worked in silence for a while, a dark cloud hanging around James.

Finally, Yeun spoke up again, “If it’s any consolation, Benson’s leaving on a business trip in a couple of days. He’ll want to get some things set up with you before he leaves, but you should have more space to breathe after that. You’ll report progress to me, as we’re going to be working together soon, and I’ll go as easy on you as I can.”

“Oh,” James said.

Briefly, the thought crossed his mind that Benson’s absence presented a window, but he swallowed the temptation to follow it further. The director wouldn’t be on site, but he would still be very much in control. There were still security guards, and all the ultimatums Benson had stacked against him and Heather.

“What is the business trip for?” James probably wasn’t even allowed to ask.

“Sponsor stuff.” Yeun snapped two halves of a cage together and dumped aspen bedding inside.

“He’ll be gone for a few days.”

“Why so long?” James slid one cage aside and started on another.

“It’s on the east coast, I think,” Yeun said. “To avoid Conxence interference. We’re not sure how much they know about us yet. Better not to take the chance, you know?”

Before long, they’d finished up, and then Yeun was taking him through a door in the back of the lab. “Have you ever done any cell splitting?”

“Not really,” James said. He found himself in a narrow room with sturdy, sealed incubators on the counters, and fume hoods at the back of the room. Compound microscopes and cabinets populated the adjacent wall.

Yeun smiled at him. “Want to learn? Keeping live stem cell cultures is a big part of the job with Non-Comp.”

“Okay.”

“Wash your hands, put on some gloves, and take a seat over there.” Yeun nodded to one of the fume hoods.

James obeyed.

“I’ll give you some dishes and fluid to practice with. No live cells,” Yeun said, opening one of the cabinets.

Yeun furnished the fume hood with a small stack of empty petri dishes, a motorized pipette controller with a disposable pipette, and an erlenmeyer flask full of water. He took hold of the gate-like window at the front of the fume hood, pulling it down. “First, you pull down the sash like this, as close to your hands as possible to avoid contamination while you’re working. Unwrap the pipette here, it goes into the tip of the pipettor. This button sucks up, this one releases it…” After showing him how the equipment worked, as James had never used motorized pipettes before, Yeun taught him how to pull up the simulated cell culture from one petri dish, and decant it into two more dishes, rattling on about more of the biological steps involved in preparing and caring for stem cell cultures.

Yeun smiled, observing his technique. “You’re a natural.”

James pressed his lips together and kept working for a few minutes more.

“About Non-Comp…” James said finally. “Benson said there are currently Compatible subjects with the original science, the one Hill developed with another bioroboticist, who doesn’t work here anymore…”

Yeun hesitated. “Yes, there are six known Compatibilities. All unique.”

“What do they do?” James asked. “I’m told we’re going to try to replicate them.”

“Yes.” Yeun went over to the nearest incubator and lay a hand on it. A label read P.J.E. “The person these cell cultures originate from has an extra set of arms. It’s the most benign and straightforward of the group, so this is the one I’m working to produce in a human subject first. And although there have been a few hangups, it’s going well, overall. My current test subject has a healthy genetic code on all the markers I needed, and has taken well to gene therapy.”

James laid down the pipette and pulled his hands from the fume hood. He wondered if someday he would be far gone enough to talk like this, like human enslavement was just a neutral technicality. Even using mice for research turned his stomach now.

Yeun renewed his smile, sensing James’ discomfort, and moved to the next incubator, “This one’s bearer has rudimentary pyrokinetic abilities, and this one—” He pointed to the next in line. “—can create a burst of projectile force. Telepathy, both reception and projection—” He gestured at each of the incubators across the room. “—That one’s bearer turns into a smoke-like substance, phasing and reforming the body at will. Oh, but that one interests me the most, to be honest.”

James looked in the direction Yeun indicated. The final incubator was marked C.R.B. James assumed the initials on each of the incubators corresponded to the subjects’ names. “What’s that one?”

“This one generates plant matter from their body,” Yeun said. “Can you believe it? And it’s not just leaves. They can create large projections that take on a variety of forms like vines and branches, which they can move as easily as their own original limbs. They’re crossing whole genetic domains! And Compatible MBE is only stimulating genes these individuals already possess. We didn’t introduce foreign genetic material.”

“Oh,” James said, considering the incubator, his hackles raising. “Why didn’t you start trying to duplicate that one, if it’s the one that interests you the most?” Empetrum obviously did what it wanted.

“That Compatibility is complex and still poorly understood,” Yeun said. “I pick at its mysteries in my free time, and while it doesn’t seem to bother its natural bearer much from what I’ve observed, when introduced to another system, it either completely doesn’t take, or it becomes extremely volatile. I’m not keen on letting it anywhere near another human system until I’ve uncovered more about what makes it tick.”

James cringed.

“Let me show you the modulators.” Yeun waved him toward the door. James followed, apprehensive.

In the main area of Yeun’s lab stood an illuminated shelf with electrical devices mounted on clear polymer frames. James had barely noticed them when Benson had dropped him off, still too shaken from his argument with Heather.

“These are the devices that drive Compatibility technology,” Yeun said. “Hill and Olsson developed a pair of compounds that are entered into these devices, one that drives the genetic activation, and another that dismantles it upon deactivation, both stabilizing the Compatible phenotypes and making them reversible.”

“Why bother making it reversible?” James leaned in to examine the devices, labeled with the model and development date. Some looked like bracelets, others were shaped like oversized microchips. A chill went up his spine as he imagined how the devices worked—hijacking a person’s genetic code and driving a rapid, manufactured evolution.

“Reversibility gives us some security over the technology,” Yeun said. “If something happens where they need to expel one of the recruits from the program, for example, the former recruit won’t be able to keep their Compatibility and use it against us. Though I prefer to focus on the modulators’ benefits to the recruits—They bolster weaker Compatible affinities, and stabilize the ones that could be dangerous if connected completely to the bearer’s nervous and endocrine systems.”

“Ah,” James said.

Yeun wistfully surveyed the modulators, his hands in his lab coat pockets. “Soon, we’ll be able to get Non-Comp up and running, if we put our heads together. I’m excited to see what you’ll bring to the project. Your neural transfer project really blew me away, you know.”

James swallowed. He stepped away from the shelves, leaning against a nearby counter cluttered with boxes of pipette tips, compound microscopes, flasks of ethanol and used slides.

“Benson’s planning on taking you to see the Compatible recruits,” Yeun went on. “He’ll probably want to do that tomorrow, to help this all sink in a little better, get you moving forward, and give our sponsors a status report they’ll like at the meeting.”

James ran a hand through his hair and tried to take a steadying breath, but it was shaky. He told himself he just had to keep moving, try to minimize damage where he could. It was the only thing he knew how to do.

Yeun came over and leaned against the counter beside him, keeping a respectable distance. “I know it’s a lot to deal with. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now,” he said, quietly. He crossed his arms and considered the floor. “Personally, I think Alder was way out of line with what he did to your friend from Larkspur, but the director has to be really careful. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about the situation in the capital, but it affects us a lot here. We could become a target of the Conxence ourselves, if we’re not cautious, or if we take too long to bring Non-Comp to a stable form. There have been threats of giving the project to some other lab, even with the breakthroughs we’ve made this year.”

James felt the fragile turbulence inside him settle into a cold, exhausted heat in his chest. He didn’t care if the militarized rebellion came for them. In fact, he hoped they would.

He hoped someday, he would watch Empetrum burn, even if he went down with it.

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